Yeah, if it is a problem then the person that cannot vote for their intended candidate (I presume it's a two step process - select, then confirm) should flag it up at the officials and the machines shut down / replaced / fixed and its manufacturer shitcanned. There's procedures for this, and instead of ragebaiting on social media there should be a firm and conclusive response.
Officials only pulled the machine once it went viral on social media — because the state regularly suppresses and ignores citizen concerns.
Political parties use social media to detect and focus their efforts — eg, where voters were turned away in PA, videos of that on social media drew enough attention the RNC sued and won an order forcing the polling places to remain open for longer.
Why do people act like social media isn’t a relevant form of communication and organization?
> Laurel County Clerk Tony Brown addressed the issue in a statement, saying the machine was temporarily taken out of service while an investigator from the Attorney General's Office was called to inspect the machine. Investigators tried to recreate the anomaly and were able to do so after spending few minutes tapping in the area of the screen between the Trump and Harris field, Brown said.
> Despite additional attempts, Brown said investigators weren't able to recreate it a second time.
> "The Kentucky Attorney General’s Department of Criminal Investigations quickly responded to the complaint from Laurel County. Detectives have been in touch with the county clerk and recommended they change out the voting machine," Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman said in a statement. "All Kentucky voters can have confidence that our elections are secure and any potential issues will be addressed quickly."
> In a statement Friday, officials from the Kentucky State Board of Elections said the voting machine registered the selection for Harris because the voter was touching two boxes simultaneously.
> Initially, the voter used their finger to "jab" the small box in the top-left corner of the Trump field on the touchscreen. After a few failed attempts, a second hand enters the frame and is seen attempting to "simultaneously click the large Trump field with an index finger and the large Robert F. Kennedy field with a thumb, leaving the Harris box highlighted," officials said.
> Michon Lindstrom, spokesperson for Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, also dismissed the incident as "voter error."
> Brown emphasized that the issue occurred on a ballot-marking machine, which does not process votes. Marking machines allow voters to make their selections for their ballot and then physically print them to be cast and counted.
> If the machine prints a faulty ballot, voters are able to discard it and print a corrected one, Brown said.
> Marking machines allow voters to make their selections for their ballot and then physically print them to be cast and counted.
As someone not from the US:
Why do you need that? What’s the advantage over manually filling out a piece of paper?
The machine can’t use the data of printed ballots for anything if I can print multiple ballots, so it’s just a glorified pen making a checkmark?
It limits the user error pens cause. You can look up old disputed ballots, many of them are things like; people sloppily starting to fill out A then realizing they really want B, making such a large checkmark that it covers A and part of B, or those pranksters that fully color in A B and C.
As this shows, it still allows some user error, but they hope for less.
I would just like to say, thank you for doing the work of locating a news post about the situation. That really helps ensure we are talking about the same thing. And it allows us to review the situation ourselves.
Ah, the tried and true "you're holding it wrong" excuse.
Is it safe to admit the voting machine UX sucks if this is remotely possible? These things should be designed so 90 year olds can use them without error - and without filing their fingertips down with little squares of sandpaper.
There's a pretty wide range of possibilities between "videos were all faked because this is the most secure election in history" and "let's not take the video at face value and await further verification because it's election season and there's plenty of bad actors trying to sow distrust in the election system by posting misleading/manipulated videos".
The implication of the videos was that this was malice (and that generates clicks) yet if you read between the lines, it's simply incompetency - uncalibrated touchscreens.
My point is local jurisdictions do not have the knowledge or resources to properly maintain or deal with electronic voting machines (of which there appears to be no national standard) and maintain integrity. If they can't remember to perform basic maintenance like calibrate the screens, what other steps are missed or ignored?
